Thousands of Deadly Spiders Found in a Single Home

A homeowner's nightmare is nearly over for one St. Louis family after thousands of brown recluse spiders were finally eradicated from a home they had fled from two years ago. This followed what sounds like scenes straight out of a horror movie, in which swarms of one of the most venomous spiders in the world were "bleeding out of the walls."

The Associated Press (AP) has reported that the Federal National Mortgage Association covered the infested house with nine tarps this week and workers filled it with a gas that permeated the walls to kill the spiders and their eggs.

"There'll be nothing alive in there after this," said Tim McCarthy, president of the company that was hired to fix the problem.

However, it took nearly five years to get to this point. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Brian and Susan Trost bought the $450,000 home in Weldon Spring back in 2007. Soon after moving in, they began to notice alarming looking spiders everywhere.

They were brown recluses, considered one of the most venomous spiders in the world, capable of causing severe paralysis and death if a deep enough and necrotic bite is not treated in short time. However, these spiders are remarkably timid, and - unlike the infamous black widow - do not turn to aggression or biting as their first line of defense.

But by 2008, the Trosts knew they had a problem on their hands, especially after two separate pest control companies failed to eradicate the arachnids. Lawsuits were filed, experts were brought in, and the couple waited.

Jamel Sandidge, a spider expert at the University of Kansas, even described the brown recluse problem at the Trost home as "immense," with between 4,500 and 6,000 spiders found in the middle of winter - when any infestation is traditionally on a decline. That, he told the Dispatch, was what was most troubling.

The Trosts moved out of thier home long ago, concerned for thier young son's safety, but they have yet to collect from lawsuits against insurance company State Farm or the original homeowners. No one was ever bitten while the family lived with the spiders.

Amazingly, this is not the first time a massive recluse infestation has been found in someone's home.

A 2002 entomological study details how more than 2,000 spiders were extracted from a home in Kansas. In the six years that the home's occupants had lived there, no one had ever been bitten.